We live out in rural western Maine... I know, I'm repeating myself there. Notwithstanding, we live on a dead-end dirt road on old farmland. We pasture the horse and two ponies up in a couple acres of meadow. We're building a new barn. We're surrounded by pine, spruce, birch, ash, and maple. The occasional stand of black locust trees make great fence posts...
The point is that I have very easy access to the woods, and therefore, to running trails. A neighbor has been allowed to put 4-wheeler trails all over the place, so I figured the fastest way to set up a simple running course would be to leverage what he has already done, coupled with the horseback riding trails I cut this year for my daughter.
I now have a lovely 400 meter "loop" marked off in 100m intervals. Because I'm newly returning to this running thing, I figured I shouldn't jump full force back into it, injure myself, then give it up and have nothing to do with these cool new trail running shoes...
The loop leaves our property, near the west end of the new barn, and heads into a stand of pine. Going up a light rise, it proceeds through a bunch of scrub (cleared for horseback riding) and brush, but then turns through a small opening at the edge of a large field and heads into maple-land. Downhill for the next 100m, with a rocky left turn, bending back through small poplar. Finally, there's a steep-ish climb in the last 20m toward the final marker.
Today is a crisp fall day, the ground is softened by maple and birch leaves, and I did four turns around my loop, for a total of one mile (1.6 km). I walked the first three, then ran the final 400m.
Okay, a one-mile walk/run is not the Boston Marathon... I know this. But it's my starting point, and I'm oddly happy to be here.
Lap times:
Loop 1 (walk): 4:48.0
Loop 2 (walk): 4:40.3
Loop 3 (walk): 4:32.9
Loop 4 (jog): 3:07.3
Total distance: 1.6 km, Total time: 17:08.5, Best mile: 17:08.5
Nice. A seventeen minute mile... :( Haha! Well, here we go! Hard to get worse than that, so I guess improvement is inevitable.
The plan is to slowly add additional loops and to slowly change the walk:jog ratio. The goal is to get back up to a three mile (5K) run, which is 12 loops on my little, wooded course.
If it is at all motivational, I've lost 7% of my body weight since August and the only thing I've changed is my exercise to jogging and my beer to Kava. Both changes have made me feel much better.
ReplyDeleteI decided to not care about goals and pressuring myself about what I eat and how much I exercise. I think "goals" creates the impression that at some point you will reach the end. Eating well and exercising to feel well shouldn't be something to postpone till I reach some arbitrary goal.